Need a distraction from the incessant stream of information (good and bad) and speculation (mostly bad) about the Coronavirus? I certainly do.

好吧，我试着给你一个。在我的下一个系列博文中——在科罗纳病毒爆发期间——我将发表关于哲学难题的文章，这些难题要么是旧的，要么是新的。And I’m going to describe the puzzles and attempt to make them gripping—andnot offer you any help in solving them.Or I won’t offer you any help until thenextblog, at which point I’ll post links to philosophical papers that offer various solutions.

如果一切顺利，每一个都应该以一种令人着迷但又有些令人沮丧的方式占据你的大脑，这至少能让你在思考当前的全球健康危机时得到一些喘息。(当然，我希望这一系列的博客是简短的，但它可能不是。)

So here’s puzzle number 1 in the series: Do we havevoluntary controlover our ownbeliefs? Or for short: Is belief voluntary?

Otherwise put: Can I simplychooseto believe something that I didn’t believe before? Or can I voluntarily choose to stop believing something that I currently believe?

The terms of the puzzle should be fairly clear, even if they’re hard to define explicitly. But I’ll elaborate just a little on the relevant terms.

Onvoluntariness. Raising your arm is something you can do voluntarily (if you’re not injured). Making your hair grow faster isnotsomething you can do voluntarily. Of course, there might be things you can choose to do that (if you’re lucky) indirectlycauseyour hair to grow faster. A change in the world, roughly and in the relevant sense, is under your voluntary control only if it unfolds in a reliable way under the direct guidance of your informed intentions. And so far, faster hair growth has never been voluntary in that sense.

Onbelief. If you’re reading this, you have many more beliefs than you even realize. I’m not just talking about your political, moral, or religious beliefs. I’m also (and primarily) talking about your everyday beliefs about how things are in the world. By “beliefs” I just mean (roughly) everything in your brain’s internal model of what the world is like. So take the beliefs you have about some random kind of object, say, an ATM machine. You, I suspect, have the following beliefs:that it has buttons,that it has a screen,that it runs on electricity,that it connects to your bank account,that you have to insert a bank card,that it takes your PIN,that it dispenses money in the currency of the country you’re in,that it stores rather than prints money, etc. And those are just your beliefs aboutonekind of object. Of course, most of those ordinary beliefs you would just label “knowledge.” But knowledge is just belief that is successful in the right way (true, justified, whatever else is needed to solve theGettier problem等)。所以，哪里有知识，哪里就有信仰(至少在传统的知识观上是这样)。

Now why is this a puzzle? And why is it important?

这是一个谜，因为证据指向两个相反的方向。Many beliefs, it seems, arenot自愿的控制之下。Can you believe that today is Friday the 13th, just by choosing to do so? You couldn’t if you tried. As William Alston puts it, to form that belief I wouldn’t know what button to press. Voluntarily changing your beliefs about mundane things like what your name is or where San Francisco is located seems not just hard—but impossible. (This position is calledinvoluntarism.)

But many beliefs do seem to be under voluntary control. When people trust others, they seem to do things likechoosingto believe their partners are faithful or that their boss has their best interests at heart. People seem often enough to choose the belief that the president is telling the truth—or lying. So contrary to the examples from the last paragraph, voluntary belief seems all around us. (This position is calledvoluntarism.)

但这种自愿的信念加深了谜题。If you form a belief bychoice, you could just as wellnothave done so. And if it’s in your power tonotbelieve something, then how convinced can you really be when you say you “believe” it? Isn’t such voluntary “belief” no more than pretense? Still, phrases like “I choose to believe” are common enough that there must besomethingto them!

So we have a puzzle. Why should we care? Much of the concern with this problem in philosophy originated among Christian philosophers. As you know, one of the basic requirements of most mainstream forms of Christianity isto believe. Believe and you go to Heaven. Don’t believe and face eternal damnation. But how on Earth (let alone Heaven) can you berequired去做一些你无法自愿控制的事情?那确实是一个残酷的神，他要求你做你所不能做的事。

But the problem generalizes. Even those of us who aren’t Christian still think that there is some sort of moral responsibility for one’s beliefs. We think people who have racist, sexist, or xenophobic beliefs are in the wrong for having those beliefs. Yet how can they be blamed for doing what is not under their voluntary control?

所以信仰是否是自愿的似乎很重要。然而，这两者都令人费解。除了信仰是否是自愿的这个谜题之外，还有一个更深层的谜题，如果信仰不是自愿的，我们该如何对它们负责。

I wish you the best in finding a solution. And if you do, let me know!